… what you maybe meant to keep…

This site hosts my collection of Irish Election Material and material from Referenda and Other Campaigns as well as some other bits and pieces. It also has scans of material that people have been so kind to have mailed on to me.

If you have a request for a certain candidate I can look, see if I have it and will gladly post it. I am always delighted to receive material too.

If you were ever to catch the elections bug, it was the early 80s. Three elections in quick succession. The posters were down and a few months later they’d be up again. Polling stations too were busy places as canvassers hadn’t the restrictions they do now. So in Feb 82 I came away with a handful of leaflets (including one autographed by Barry Desmond). I held on to the ones that had been delivered to the house and hey presto I had a collection…..

…Eight months later there was another election, this time some relatives kept stuff for me also and over time the circle and location of donors grew. I wrote to parties and candidates too requesting literature and in recent years the advent of email has saved me a fortune in stamps…. you’d be surprised how few respond given that most people don’t actually want the stuff.
So many years later I’ve taken to scanning it …and here we are.
Whats here? a varied array of things to date ….. but In all I have election literature from over 50 Irish political groups as well as Independents and Material from most referenda too.

I have a host of other political ephemera too . In other words years scanning ahead…
I hope that I’ve created a fairly unique Irish historical and political resource. Candidates that got 30 votes to candidates who got 30,000 votes. Parties that won many seats to parties that won no seats to groups that never fought elections at all.

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26 Responses to “About/Contact”

[…] Cork, Ireland, Irish Election Literature Blog, politicsAJ from the Irish Election Literature Blog has been in touch to let us know about his huge collection that is currently being pit on line. […]

This is a remarkable collection and a valuable resource. I caught a discussion on the radio earlier about the difficulties of archiving in an electronic age so it’s great to see someone doing their bit at an individual level. I know some people who would be very interested in checking out your site so I’ll be passing on the details and adding it to my own blogroll.

I have been ask to coordinate the tally again for this year’s election I hope that you will be willing to be part of this all party tally it work very well in the 2007 election. If so could you give me the contact details of the person who will deal with the tally.

An Independent Voice for All Public Servants including Teachers, Lecturers, Social Workers, Health Workers, All Administrative and Maintenance Staff , and all Public Service Pensioners as New Government Promises to eliminate 25,000 Jobs

A Voice for Academic Freedom As New Government Reinforces Existing Threats and Department of Education threatens further pay cuts for Lecturers.

A Voice For Post-Doctoral Researchers,Postgrads and Temporary Teachers

A Voice for all employees, the unemployed, Occupational Pensioners and the Needy at Home and Abroad

Tireless Campaigner

paddy is Chairman of the National Public Service Alliance—an informal alliance of public service trade union activists which is fighting public service pay cuts, pension levy, work overload, staffing moratorium and destruction of conditions of service under the Croke Park Deal

He is Convenor of the Campaign for Academic Freedom which recently held a gathering of 200 academics in the Gresham Hotel to resist threats to academic freedom, permanency and tenure arising out of the implementation of the Croke Park Deal in Third level institutions: The New Government in its programme threatens: “We will introduce radical reform in third level institutions to maximise existing funding, in particular, reform of academic contracts and will encourage greater specialisation by educational institutions.”

He is resisting the imposition of business models on 3rd Level education as proposed in the Hunt Report

He is organising opposition to the shameful treatment of Post-doctoral Researchers in third level institutions and seeking a permanent career structure for researchers and a new deal under which Postgraduate Students carrying out teaching work would get properly paid for each hour worked. He is totally opposed to the attempt to make Student Nurses work for nothing.

He is Chairman of the Campaign to Reverse the Pension Cuts which is organising a legal challenge to the recent public service pension cuts. He is fighting for the removal of the Universal Social Charge which is unfairly reducing private occupational pensions.

He is campaigning against cuts in public services such as health, education and social work and the elimination of jobs under the staffing moratorium.

He is campaigning for the restoration of the full quota of Special Duties and Assistant Principal posts in schools

Job Creation and Investment

He advocates a major programme of state job creation in sophisticated modern industry to employ the 100,000 qualified people who are now on the dole and being forced to emigrate

He is continuing his long standing campaign to increase investment in Education at all levels.

Former President Teachers Union of Ireland(TUI), Lecturer in Physics(retd),

Research Interest: Musical Instrument Acoustics, Former member of

Governing Body and Academic Council DIT,

Ag Freastail ar Daonscoil na Mumhan sa Rinn gach blian,

Former Treasurer Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed(INOU),

Former Executive Member Dublin Council of Trade Unions.

He Lives at Griffith Court, Fairview, D 3 and is a native of Clonmel, Co Tipperary

Radical Change Needed

To make possible the objectives set out above, Fundamental Change is required.

Government Policy

Irish sovereignty must be recovered by facing down the EU and the IMF and insisting on a structured negotiated default under which the debts of banks, then privately owned, would not be paid while rescuing small investors and credit unions. The capitulation of the New Government to the EU/IMF will lead to disaster.

Mortgage Debt on principal domestic residences which was inflated during the property bubble must be reduced. Interest rates must be frozen and the capital sum reduced to current house values. Evictions must be banned.

The 90 Billion lent out recklessly by finance houses since 2003 must be recovered. This can be done by the imposition of a tax on large assets outside the domestic residence and the farm.

Reductions in Social Welfare, and increased taxes on the lowly paid must be reversed.

Cuts in Public services must end now. Cuts in disability services and in Special Needs Provision are particularly reprehensible

Trade Union Reform

The ICTU leadership has failed the members of trade unions. Members of the leadership sat on the Board of the Central Bank and on the the National Social and Economic Council(NESC) and on bodies such as the Board of Fás through the period of reckless borrowing and extreme right-wing policies. Apart from faint bleatings, nobody shouted stop.

Now there are 450,000 people on the dole, one thousand per week emigrating, public service pay and pensions cut, thousands of frontline posts eliminated, massive increase in workload of teachers, lecturers, nurses, other health professionals, social workers and public servants generally, cuts in social welfare benefits etc

Now the, The SIPTU leader who is also ICTU President is reported as having given qualified support to the formation of a FG-LAB coalition whose programme for Government contains a commitment to eliminate 25,000 public service jobs!! “Siptu chief Jack O’Connor claimed the Programme for Government was the best of the alternatives available” Irish Independent 07/03

There has been a total leadership failure in ICTU

The calling off of campaigns and the supine acceptance of cuts and income reductions has disoriented thousands of members.

In my forthcoming book which is available on line at http://wp.me/pKzXa-gw ,I argue for complete renewal of the trade union movement both in its leadership and structures to restore control of the unions to members. This renewal must come from within the movement without legislative interference. The title of the work is : “How ICTU Failed US, the Necessity for Election and Regular Re-Election of General Secretaries.”

Supporters Who Recommend NO 1 Vote for paddy Healy

I am very grateful to the 160 public servants who are recommending a vote for me to colleagues. I regret that the full list can only be read on my Blog at:

Re: Brendan Doris
I noticed that your site hosted a page for the candidacy of Brendan Doris.
I was in the same class as him in Bolton Street in the early 80’s and i remember that he said that his political preference was for “Albanian Stalinism”. Was he joking….. am I hallucinating? I do remember that he reminded me of the title character in the sitcom “Citizen Smith” who’s catchphrase was; “Come the revolution you’ll be first against the wall”

Why are the Raymond Whitehead videos labelled private when you click on the start button? We embedded them on our website because Mr. Whitehead’s presentation is the clearest and most informative lecture on the subject of direct democracy. Please answer asap as we are trying to wake up our community before a coal port is FORCED upon us.

not mad about this site to be honest it does not do any thing for me. but i do really like your massage. i 100% agree with what ye say. i would like to vote for ye in country limerick. i was a sinn finne supporter but when they agreed to gay marriage in cork i said i would never vote for them again. i would love to run my self but im only a binman.

Hi Alan, your twitter postings come up in my twitter page and are v interesting.. Ditto your website. I have wondered, by any chance do you hail originally from Rathfarnham? Regards Brian Cullen, Rathfarnham.